Brain Arcade

Brain Arcade

Unlock the secrets of game design with Brain Arcade! Join Creative Director Chris Cross, a 30+ year industry veteran, as he dives into his insights on building engaging games and mastering the art of communicating with your audience. Looking for deeper knowledge that you can actually apply? Chris and his diverse guests from various professions examine theories and uncover fresh perspectives to validate or debunk Chris' experiential knowledge. Get ready to learn, challenge ideas, and elevate your brain.

Episodes

Holiday Break!

November 27, 2025 • 1 min
We're taking a break for the holidays and will be back in the new year with a brand new season and new content! We'll be doing more topic deep dives so let us know what you want to hear about! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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20 Years of Games: Working at Telltale, Jam City, Genvid and n-Space (Wii and DS)

November 18, 2025 • 53 mins
Game Industry veteran Chris Schroyer (The Walking Dead, Wolf Among Us, Tales from the Borderlands) stops by Brain Arcade to dive into DS wild-west creativity, mechanics as storytelling, and early-career origin stories. We unpack healthy (and unhealthy) indie dev rhythms, and explore how feedback, emotion, and weird ideas shape unforgettable games. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Build Better Leaders to Build Better Games

November 11, 2025 • 41 mins
Leadership matters even more on tiny teams. Coach and trainer Andy Coley shares how to communicate clearly, set expectations that stick to keep scope and moral under control so you can actually ship. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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From TV to Unreal with Chris Knauer

November 4, 2025 • 41 mins
Writer Chris Knauer joins Brain Arcade to talk about his leap from writers’ rooms into Unreal Engine. We dig into what it means to treat games as a conversation with players, how art and interactivity collide, and why learning to manage scope might be the most creative act of all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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How do Juniors Get Experience? with Nathan White (Threeclipse Inc.)

October 30, 2025 • 51 mins
Nathan White, founder of Threeclipse Inc. joins to talk about building opportunities for juniors in game dev through mentorship and real shipped projects. We dig into what it takes to break in today, finish what you start, and build a sustainable creative path. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Profit and Play: The Business of Games

October 21, 2025 • 52 mins
Returning guest Mark Netter and I dig into the business of play. From mergers and layoffs to AI-driven development and the shrinking middle class of indie studios. We look at how money, creativity, and technology are reshaping the games industry and what developers and players alike can learn from it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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From Pixar to Silent Hill: Stephan Bugaj on Storytelling, Community & Discovery

October 14, 2025 • 56 mins
Stephan Bugaj (Pixar, Telltale, Genvid) joins me to explore the real reasons games succeed and why traditional marketing no longer cuts it. We dig into the saturation of the games market, the myth of “build it and they will come,” and how authentic communities are replacing ad campaigns. We also look at discoverability from a dev’s perspective, how to find your audience and why word of mouth still matters. Learn more about your a...
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Discoverability, Community, and the Death of Traditional Marketing

October 7, 2025 • 50 mins
Chris chats with Producer and previous VP of Production, Arthur von Nagel (Ubisoft, Genvid, Telltale), about how small teams build community-driven hits like Vampire Survivors, Balatro, and Cult of the Lamb. They dig into fandom, identity, and why marketing isn't what it used to be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Becoming a Director: Storytelling lessons from Games and Film

September 30, 2025 • 48 mins
Chris sits down with longtime friend, animator and filmmaker Joe Ksander, to trace his path from dorms of UCLA to EA’s Medal of Honor and from Hollywood VFX into making films. They talk about crunch culture, learning animation on the job, and how they shaped each other's storytelling skills. Joe and Chris have a heartfelt chat on perseverance, media production, and 30+ years of friendship through games. Learn more about your ad cho...
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Comedy writing from Nintendo to the Tonight Show with Mike Drucker

September 23, 2025 • 46 mins
Emmy-nominated comedy writer, Author, and Comedian Mike Drucker (Nintendo, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, The Tonight Show) joins Brain Arcade to talk about punching up the comedy for everything from games to TV and film. He brings his years of experience and success to shed light on the difference between comedy games vs. comedy in games and why not every character should have the same punchlines. Plus, he talks favorite funny ga...
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Break Time!

September 16, 2025 • 16 secs
We're taking a break this week and wanted to say THANK YOU for joining us on this podcast journey! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Empowering Your External Development Partners

September 9, 2025 • 45 mins
Producer Janyl Lambee Tanoy shares insights on building strong partnerships with external development teams covering trust, documentation, communication styles, and how to set clear expectations across studios. A must-listen for anyone optimizing cross-team collaboration in game dev. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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How to Run a Successful Indie Studio with Founder Joe Mirabello

September 2, 2025 • 47 mins
Indie veteran Joe Mirabello (Terrible Posture Games) joins Brain Arcade to unpack how indie studios can survive these challenging times and how their new game "Battle Train" got made with spanning scrappy prototyping and a smart publishing partnerships. We dig into avoiding the “hamster wheel” deals, surviving today’s discoverability crunch, and lessons from scaling a studio without losing their heart. Joe talks through some practi...
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Creativity vs. Business with Game Changers Producer Steve Hoffmann

August 28, 2025 • 50 mins
Producer, Writer, Director Steve Hoffmann (The Toys That Made Us, Miami Ink) joins Brain Arcade to unpack what game development and rock bands have in common — and why so many studios lose their magic. We talk about the rise of indie teams, nostalgia-fueled arcades, broken business models and the future of creative freedom, this episode is a candid look at the soul of game making in 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit me...
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Answering your questions! Hidden Consequences vs. Explicit Feedback

August 26, 2025 • 48 mins
Today we answer your questions and we had a great question come from Plexicraft! Narrative expert, Martin Montgomery, returns to Brain Arcade to dig into how player choices shape narrative. From Chrono Trigger’s hidden consequences to Telltale’s “everyone will remember that” prompts, we explore the pros and cons of explicit feedback vs. subtle systems and what it means for player agency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ...
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Designing Fear: How Sound Design Shapes Player Emotion

August 12, 2025 • 48 mins
Sound Designer & Creative Director Jonathan Ontiveros (Know Buddy Games) joins Brain Arcade to explore how sound design can craft fear, tension, and immersion in games. We dig into the psychology of sound, silence, and sonic misdirection to shed light on how indie teams can use these tools to shape unforgettable player experiences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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A love letter to MMO's: Building A Player-First Game

August 5, 2025 • 48 mins
David Siddock and Chris Cross sit down this week to talk about their shared love for MMOs (especially WoW), why those memories stick, why they quit MMOs, and how we can use this information to focus on building a player-first game in the future. David talks about his person project and some innovative ideas that he's building in to create a game that he would be excited to play. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/...
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How Blockchain Can Empower Small Game Teams and Build Player Trust

July 26, 2025 • 51 mins
Wills from Avalanche joins us to explore how blockchain can potentially empower small teams to build trust-first, community-driven games. We dig into ownership, transparency, and why the future of game development is all about creators and players building together. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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New Start: Building the Indie Ecosystem I Wish I Had

July 22, 2025 • 51 mins
Chris talks about some big changes, he is stepping away from his full-time job and into something new. In this special episode, we flip the mic to talk about the shift, why the current industry isn't built to support sustainable indie dev, and what it would take to change that. From mentorship gaps to missing ecosystems, Chris shares the lessons he’s learned, the problems he wants to help solve, and the long game behind his next ch...
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Serverless Games? What if Online Games Could Live Forever?

July 15, 2025 • 52 mins
Ken from Tashi.gg is back with us again diving deeper into his goal of creating forever games. We talk about sustainable server solutions for live games and how smaller teams can benefit from these options. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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